9 Letters (26 page)

“Sexual intimacy is, for
some, a welcome relief from mourning.”

“Let people help you. Let
the people who want to help you do so.”

“Don’t let yourself
become afraid of emotional intimacy.”

And so on, for pages and pages.

Jesus Christ.

I felt violated.

I’d made it on my own for
more than a year. I didn’t
need
Rae to make me feel better. I hadn’t gotten with her as part of
the mourning process. I’d come to her because I’d become
strong again, because I’d been getting myself ready to let
someone into my life.

And she’d come in assuming
I needed saving.

It just felt wrong.

I poured myself coffee, but I
didn’t pour any for Rae. She was asleep. Better leave her that
way. I snuck back into the room, grabbed the rest of my clothes and
my dog, then finished dressing in the living room.

I cast one more look at Rae. I
couldn’t handle the kind of conversation I’d need to have
with her. Not yet. If ever. I put my boots on, and I left.

There was a truck in my driveway.
It wasn’t blocking my way, it was over on the gravel side. But
it was in my driveway. It looked familiar.

I pulled in, got out, unloaded
King, and I saw Natalie sitting on the front steps, the door ajar
behind her.

Right. Natalie’s truck.

Why the hell...

“Have a good time last
night?” she asked. She stood up when she saw me. I’m not
one to get intimidated by anyone, but she came close. Something in
the way she was standing there, I remembered something my mom had
told me.

My mom, she’d worked hard
as hell to make me a decent man. I’d like to say she succeeded.
One thing she’d told me, though, one thing that stuck: “Luke,
the thing you’ve got to know is, most people who get murdered
get murdered by someone they know. Most women who get murdered get
murdered by their husbands. Whoever you marry, she’s going to
know that. No matter how much she loves you, she’s always going
to remember that fact.”

Most people get murdered by
someone they know. So I wasn’t
scared
of Natalie, because I just don’t scare that easy. But I was
damn sure aware of her and the fact that she had her concealed carry
license.

“Good morning,” I
said.

“Out with some other
woman?” she asked.

I kept my hands where she could
see them.

“Why should you get to go
out and have fun and fall in love again? Huh?”

“It’s not like that,
Natalie.”

“You get to have
girlfriends again. Fall in love again. Maybe one day you’ll get
married again. But me? I’m never going to have another sister.”
Natalie was breathing hard, but there were tears in her eyes and I
knew her words came from pain, even if they looked like anger.

She wasn’t going to hurt
me. I knew that by then. But I didn’t know how to handle it,
whether she needed me to say something, try to make her feel better,
or just stand there and listen to what she had to say.

“No one will ever replace
Emily,” I said. But there wasn’t sadness in my voice.
There wasn’t any emotion at all, because it took everything I
had to keep the anger out of it.

“I read the letters,”
she said.

“What?”

Jesus, I was furious. Had to keep
my temper under control. Of course I’d never thought to ask
Natalie for her house key back. Never had a reason to. Not till now.

“Not the last two. I didn’t
open them. But I read the other letters.”

“Why?” I asked.

“She’s my
sister
,”
she said. “My actual blood. My actual flesh. She’s dead.
If she wrote something, I can read it.”

I counted to three silently, in
my head. Striving for control. “Did you take them?”

“Your fucking letters are
on top of your fucking table,” she said. “But what the
hell makes you so special that she writes you and she doesn’t
write me? Huh? I knew her four times as long as you did. I taught her
how to ride. Hell, I’m the one who told her to go after you.”

“You…you did?”
This was news.

“‘Oh there’s
this cute boy, he plays baseball,’ she said after her first day
of school. I told her to go after you. After you got married, she
asked me what I thought. I told her I was happy for her. I did
everything
for her, for the two of you, to keep you happy. When you were just
being a whiny shitty prick, sitting there crying at her bedside, I
kept her together and I kept you together. And what does she do? With
her last hours alive? She writes
you
.
And she hid it from me. And then a year later makes me deliver them.
God, if I’d known what was in that package I never would have—”
her voice trailed off, and she shook her head. “So now you get
help, and what do I get? What am I left to do?”

All kinds of answers came to my
mind. I had all kinds of advice for her. None of it was nice. None of
it took into consideration the fact that Natalie might have a gun in
her purse. Truth is, I thought I knew why Emily’d written
letters to me and not to her sister. It was because she knew Natalie
was already strong enough to make it through, and that I wasn’t
going to be. Not in the face of losing her. Emily knew I’d need
the help. But I was too angry to say that out loud.

“Keep the fucking letters,”
I said.

“What?”

“You’re not dealing
with your own fucking grief, you’re just putting it on me. You
want the letters so bad, you go and get them. Get a dog. Clean your
room. Build a house. Make an ass of yourself on stage. Who fucking
cares.”

My phone rang, just then, while
Natalie was staring at me in shock.

It was Rae. I answered.

“What?”

“I’m so sorry,”
she said. “You saw the book, didn’t you?”

“I don’t need you
trying to fix me,” I said. “Leave me alone.”

I hung up, furious. I turned back
to Natalie, gave up on mastering my voice.

“I don’t need Emily
trying to fix me either. And I sure as shit don’t need her
sister trying to make me feel worse about a whole lot of shit that
isn’t my fault.”

My phone started ringing again. I
didn’t even look at it.

“Get the fuck off my
property,” I said to Natalie. “Leave me alone.”

I went past her, into the house.
King ran in past the screen door just as it was swinging shut, and I
slammed the front door as soon as he was through it. Dead bolted it.
I’d have to change the locks.

I waited there, clenching and
unclenching my fists, until I heard her truck pull angrily out of my
driveway, spitting gravel as it rolled onto the street.

I went into the kitchen. Seven
letters open, two letters sealed.

It was stupid. It was all stupid.

I grabbed the letters, threw them
in the trashcan under the sink.

The whole thing had been stupid.

I tried to calm down the way
you’re supposed to. I really did.

Punching pillows, I don’t
know that that’s ever worked for anyone. I got into my truck,
drove to a secondhand sports equipment store. Bought a heavy bag.
Fifty bucks ain’t cheap, but it was a hell of a lot less than
what I was going to spend on new furniture if I smashed what all I
had. So really, it was kind of a deal.

Drove it home.

King knew something was wrong.
He’s not stupid, that dog. But there wasn’t a thing I
could do for him, not just then.

I downed a beer and then chained
the heavy bag up in my garage. There was just enough calm in me to
wrap up my hands before I started pounding that thing. Downed another
beer just before I started, even though the alcohol would slow me up
some.

After an hour, I was utterly
exhausted. And I was still mad as hell.

I knew I wasn’t feeling
rational, so in a brief lucid moment, I slipped my phone into the
crack between the fridge and the wall. Somewhere it would take calm,
coordinated effort to retrieve it from.

Because there wasn’t anyone
in the world I could talk to that would make any of this feel any
better.

My rage was still there, but now
it was a cold rage. A rage I thought I could silence by watching TV.
I let myself fall into the couch with a bottle of whiskey. King came
up and snuggled with me, and at some point I fell asleep during the
game with my shoes still on.

I woke up in the dark because
King had to pee and he was whining by the door.

“Quit your whining,”
I said, stumbling into consciousness. I let him out into the
backyard, let him get his business done. Then I walked back into my
house. I went back to the couch, tried to sleep. Couldn’t.

I didn’t know what time it
was until I got to my truck. Nine or so. I’d slept for a long
time.

I’d killed her.

That’s what this was all
about.

That’s why I was angry at
Natalie, that’s why I was angry at Rae. It’s why I was
angry at Emily, Maggie, myself. I was angry because I’d been so
goddamned stupid and selfish and I’d overlooked the single most
important thing in the world. I’d taken Emily’s health
for granted. I’d taken for granted that things that are
happening just keep happening.

All my life, that’s what
they’d done. The Royals played every year. I went to school
every year. My dad’s work kept up. My granddad drove trucks. My
mom gave me scary and meaningful advice. And my wife? My wife had
kept me going, and I thought I was keeping her going. But instead,
I’d just taken her for granted. Assumed she’d always be
there. No need to get health insurance, not yet. No need to look into
her lack of appetite, not yet. It was just stress. That’s what
we’d said.

So I’d let her convince me
to ignore it, and I’d ignored it, and I might as well have put
a bullet in her gut because I sure wasn’t doing anything about
the cancer that was in there.

I went to Lou’s, sat down
at the bar. None of my friends were in, which was fine. Hadn’t
really expected them. Ordered a beer.

Lou, he’d given me the
advice he was going to give me. No need to trouble him. I just drank
that beer and watched the game like I cared about it.

I drank two more after that.

I shouldn’t be alive.

That thought came through the fog
around my brain, like a beacon from a lighthouse. Exactly like a
lighthouse, actually. A lighthouse doesn’t say “come this
way, come towards the light,” it says “what the hell are
you thinking, don’t head over here, there are rocks and you’ll
shipwreck.” That’s what that thought was.

I steered clear.

One more for the road. I got the
beer down, went out to my truck, and broke the one law I cared about
in this world. I drove home drunk.

I stumbled in through the door.

My stupid house.

I should have given it to
Natalie.

Emily left half of what she owned
to her sister. Emily also had owned half the house—I’d
insisted. If I’d given Natalie the house, she would have had to
learn what it’s like to live in the goddamned city, with
goddamned people everywhere. She would have had to live with Emily’s
memories all around her. She would have had to live in Emily’s
house like it was some open-casket funeral home where the bodies
never got buried, they just stayed out in the open, and every time I
walked into the house I saw her face.

I didn’t want to see her
face.

There was a portrait, framed,
along the stairwell.

I went out to the garage, got my
hand wraps. I wrapped up my fist, then I put my fist into the glass.
King jumped up, then went to hide in the kitchen.

“I’m sorry, King,”
I said.

I swept up the glass, and I threw
it and the picture into the trash.

It wasn’t just me in the
house. I had to remember that. Don’t scare a dog. It took me
ten minutes to convince King everything was okay.

Dogs are stupid, I guess.

After that, I went through the
house with a trash bag, threw every picture of Emily into it. I
wasn’t going to live in a funeral home.

It wasn’t enough, though.
You can’t destroy the memory of someone, not without destroying
a bit of yourself. I needed something more. I took my guitar out of
its case, went out to the back porch and closed the door behind me. I
didn’t want to scare King.

Then I smashed the ever-loving
shit out of my guitar. I smashed it into the deck until the body
detached from the neck, then I set the neck up against the fence and
kicked it, snapping it like firewood.

I stumbled and fell, because I
was too drunk to be doing things like that, and I lay on the patio
for a good while, who knows how long. Who cares.

I was starting to sober up,
though, and I wasn’t ready to feel that way. That got me up and
back in the house. Went to the fridge, grabbed a Coors. The fridge
started making the worst noise. A kind of rattle and hum. I stared,
confused, with the door open, and then I saw light coming from behind
the fridge. My phone. Right. My phone was on vibrate.

I found the broom and used its
handle to knock my phone out to where I could grab it. I’d
missed the call. It was my brother, Mike.

I called him back.

All the people in the world I
thought I couldn’t call. I’d forgotten about Mike.

“Luke,” he said.

“It’s past midnight,”
I said.

“I couldn’t sleep. I
was lying there, and I was thinking about how long it’s been
since I’ve heard from you, and I couldn’t sleep. How you
doing?”

I thought about it. “Can I
come see you?” I asked.

“Always,” Mike said.

“Thanks.”

“My wife’s asleep,”
Mike said. “Meet me at the church. We’ll talk there.”

They call it a sanctuary. At the
funeral, I’d thought that was cruel. A stadium, that’s a
sanctuary. A place you go to forget. To be free from all the shit of
the world. Even a bar, you might call that a sanctuary.